The ‘Tyranny’ Of

Rice

NG Veteran Urges An Alternative

‘•TTOW much longer are Pacific ll Islands employers going to sub mit to the tyranny of the rice theory?” [ asked “Bill” MacGregor (Mr. W. A.

MacGregor, manager of the Adminis tration's cattle-breeding station in the i Highlands of New Guinea) when he f was in Sydney last month on furlough.

“Before the war,” he pointed out, l“rice was one of the cheapest foods, and most easily procured. It came in shiploads from Asia and it was the Rest thing available for the feeding I of our labour.

“To-day, many sources of rice have dried up. All production has [been disorganised by politics, and in any event the Asiatics who eat rice are increasing so rapidly in numbers [that they want all the rice they can produce. Australia has started grow ing rice, but at rates which puts this food close to the luxury class.

“Yet the Islands employers, al though rice has increased enormously in price, continue slavishly to import it, and pay £lOO a ton for it. Even a coconut economy cannot carry that, burden much longer. They don’t seem to have the initiative or the energy to look for an alternative.

“Of course there’s an alternative.

Up at Goroka, in the Highlands, our old friend Jerry Pentland is showing us what I think is the answer to the problem. He has been growing corn for some time—and that country grows very good corn. He mills it, and he trades it to the natives—and those Highland natives like it, and want more. Now they themselves have started growing it, and Pent land buys it from them, and mills it, and sells it again.

“You can grow good corn on any plantation in the Islands, and it is just as valuable a food as rice. Any landowner who has to feed natives can do what Jerry Pentland has done —and put an end to this pestilential rice headache.”

A Bad Shipment

There was a stir in merchandising circles in Sydney in late September, when it was discovered that hundreds of tons of Australian rice, which had been shipped to New Caledonia and New Hebrides, was of such poor quality that it was unfit for use. It was described as “green”. As Aus tralian rice, owing to general

shortage, is now sold to the Islands

at a high price, representatives of

Australian interests left hurriedly for Noumea, to see what could be done about it.

Export Price Is £34

Australia produces about 50,000 tons of rice per annum, almost all in the Murrumbidgee irrigation area.

It is sold wholesale in Australia at £25 per ton; but from 35,000 to 40,000 tons per annum are exported (15,000 tons p.a. to New Guinea) at £34 per ton. Yet, by the time that rice reaches the consumer its price has more than doubled. It costs at least £lOO Aust. per ton to-day to

place rice on an out-station or distant plantation in the Islands.

Mr. T. Welch of the Department of Island Territories Auckland office made the August-September round trip to the Cook Islands of “Maui Pomare.”